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I had a notion that I'd actually finished yesterday's entry before I posted it. Wrong. And furthermore, the most important word in the mustard seed story was supposed to be unable, not able. I hate when I do that. Is there a name for that - typing the opposite of what you mean?
I think the right thing to do is go back and revise yesterday's entry so historians and literary critics alike can get the full picture. The correct picture. Gee, I try to write about impermanence and screw up the punch line... must be too tired to be doing such profound stuff.
Note: I have redone yesterday's entry to fix the above goof up and to include the missing material at the end. The whole thing should hang together a little better now - or at least the title will make sense.
Yesterday's topic was impermanence, today's topic is the inevitability of suffering. To quote a local rock band of the early '80's (The Fools): "Life sucks and then you die." To paraphrase Buddha: "life sucks, you die, and you get reborn to do it over and over and over again until you get it right."
The main thing that struck me while comparing the entries for this day in 1995 with 1996 is the juxtaposition of death and taxes, the inevitable sufferings of life. Last year I was worried to distraction about a huge tax burden on some stock options I had exercised when the stock was at a reasonable price and then it dropped so my sell order to sell at that price never got executed but because it was an incentive stock option I had to pay tax on the difference between what I paid for it and what it was the day I bought it even though I didn't get any money until way way later (I waited for it to go back up for months so I'd have enough money to pay the taxes ). I realize this explanation is confusing and probably more than any reader wants to know. The big thing is I owed a lot of taxes and had to wait for the stock to go to a certain price to have the money to pay them.
A mere year before that I was 3 days into my "year and a half off" , writing in the cold and high altitude at Ghost Ranch, deeply worried that Steven would die before I got home and I wouldn't know. Or something.
Odd. In 1996 I was worried about something I could sort of have controlled. In 1995 I was worried about something I couldn't control. Have I learned the difference? Maybe.
So now it's 1997, and I'm worried that my time off has stretched to 2 years and I still don't feel restored to a pre-burnout state. I'm definitely not restored to a state where I could work the hours and intensity level required in high-tech. I just (about an hour ago) had lunch with an old friend/former coworker who is fed up with the hours and the intensity and the lack of control over your own future. He's planning to sail around the world with his family. The boat is almost ready. We talked a lot about how dehumanizing high-tech is. And how it is not self-actualizing anymore if it ever was.
The thing is, I don't know if it's just my age (I'll be 46 in April) or if the work is really less satisfying now. I get more satisfaction out of scrubbing litter boxes at the cat shelter than out of making $14 million management decisions, negotiating, planning, scheduling... So, my friends say , you hate management so go back to writing or programming. I liked those things. I really liked writing because I got to research different aspects of the technology and constantly learn new stuff. The thing is now, even the new stuff seems boring to me. It's not alive. I would rather write about living things or the places where those things live and how they got to be the way they are.
I think on some level I am not just burned out but actually called to do something else.
It is single digit cold today. I slept late. Wilbur scratched me. My cold or whatever it is still hangs on. I'm upset because I didn't realize I had to pay tax on the stock options. Now I'll have to sell it all immediately at market price. I don't feel like working. All I want to do is sleep.
I'm thinking of a number between one and ten. If you guess the number you win some big prize. That's the first thing that pops into my head. I'm thinking about something I don't want to think about. I'm thinking about the elephant in the living room too big to miss but nobody there wants to talk about it.
I'm thinking right now how Steven recovered from pneumonia three years ago and a host of opportunistic infections since then with names like PCP and CMV trails of [illegible] initials. Can't write this am thinking. They are very much on my mind today as Steven is in the hospital with CMV and the doctors are predicting maybe he'll make it to the first ripe tomato but probably not 'til Christmas and he and Thomas are fighting about things like the laundry and his refusal to make a will and who gets the big screen tv when he's gone. Thomas tries hard to stay sane and cheerful in the face of being left alone with the 7 Siamese cats, 1 black cat, and Cappy the mangy German shepherd with breast cancer.
I have a lien on Cappy I guess. I loaned Thomas the money to pay for her surgery. The vet thinks she has another 5 years. She'll probably outlive Steven. Will she outlive Thomas? Would I repossess Cappy if T and S don't pay back the loan? Who would want that scruffy [illegible] dog? The Siamese love her. They miss her when she's gone to the vet or to Connecticut to Steve's family's place. They turn their backs and withhold their Siamese attention from Thomas and Steve as punishment for taking their dog away.
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